Ryan Senecal, an assembly worker at DR Power Equipment, works on a machine on Monday at the company's Winooski manufacturing plant. / MADDIE MCGARVEY/FREE PRESS

The EB5 visa investor program helped finance new construction, including theGate House Lodge, at the Sugarbush resort in Warren. Seen on Friday, March 8, 2013. / GLENN RUSSELL/FREE PRESS

How to spend $600 million in the Northeast Kingdom$225 million for expansion at Jay Peak Resort; $150 million for expansion at Burke Mountain Resort; $160 million for new downtown block and hotel and conference center in Newport; $110 million for AnC Bio, a biotech facility in Newport.

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The heat and light emanating from Bill Stenger’s media-dominating $600 million plan for foreign investment in the Northeast Kingdom have overshadowed any other such efforts in Vermont. But there are seven EB-5 projects in various stages of development in the state, plus at least one project that’s not yet ready for prime time.

The federal EB-5 immigration program, administered by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, offers a conditional green card to foreign nationals who invest $1 million in a qualified project in the United States, or $500,000 in an economically depressed area of the country, such as the Northeast Kingdom.

After two years, if 10 full-time jobs, direct and indirect, have been created as a result of the EB-5 investments in a project, the investors receive permanent green cards for themselves and their immediate families, allowing them to live and work in the United States. Their children also can attend school here — a critical factor for many of the investors.

Stenger and his partner Ari Quiros have used the EB-5 program to great effect at Jay Peak, building a $75 million hotel and $25 million water park, among other projects. At Burke Mountain Resort, which they also own, Stenger and Quiros will build more accommodations and amenities. In Newport, their plans include a revitalization of the downtown, a new biotech company called AnC Bio, and a high-tech window manufacturing plant. All of it adds up to that $600 million price tag.

The EB-5 projects that are not part of Bill Stenger’s plans for the Kingdom cover a fairly wide range of activities, from manufacturing to real estate development, and also include at least one other ski resort. Here’s a rundown:

AFcell Medical

This biotech company provides amniotic tissue membrane for surgical use, designed to be placed over damaged internal membranes to aid healing. Founder and Chief Executive Officer Robin Young, a former Wall Street analyst, said he’s looking to raise $10 million from 20 investors to get things up and running in Vermont.

Right now, the company has an office just outside Waterbury with “one lonely guy there like the Maytag repairman, holding down the fort,” Young says. But he will have lots of company, according to Young, in six to nine months, perhaps as many as 10 more employees.

Young is based outside of Philadelphia and has an office in Parsippany, N.J., with seven employees. He doesn’t disclose revenue, but Young said he was breaking even after being in business for just three years, until he raised $2 million in equity financing to spend on clinical trials.

“We’re no longer breaking even,” Young said.

Young decided to open a manufacturing facility in Vermont because of the “excellent” reputation of the EB-5 Vermont Regional Center, he says — the only state-owned and state-operated regional center in the country — and also because Waterbury is within 100 miles of prestigious medical institutions, including Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Dartmouth-Hitchcock in New Hampshire, and Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington.

Country Home Products

Joe Perrotto is chief executive officer and a shareholder of Vergennes-based Country Home Products, which makes log splitters, lawnmowers, brush mowers, chippers, stump grinders, power tillers and more under the DR Power Equipment name brand.

Perrotto focused his EB-5 fundraising efforts exclusively on China, beginning in 2009. He needed $12 million and 24 investors. After navigating “more than a few dead ends” in his efforts to reach out directly to Chinese investors, Perrotto began working with immigration agents in China.

“The way the market is driven in China there are agencies that specialize in helping Chinese nationals with immigration opportunities like EB-5, and for many other countries, Canada and Australia being particularly popular,” Perrotto said.

These immigration agents would organize seminars, where Perrotto could state his case for investing in Country Home Products. Afterward, the truly interested would stick around to ask questions.

“It’s definitely — and I think Bill Stenger would echo this — an eyeball-to-eyeball activity,” Perrotto said of pitching EB-5 investors. “It can’t be delegated to others. These people are obviously making a substantial personal financial commitment.”

Given the nature of the transaction — and Stenger does echo the assessment that EB-5 investors demand the personal touch — Perrotto said raising the $12 million, which took three years, required a lot more of his time than he expected it would.

“For anyone contemplating EB-5, it’s not about just putting your offering in the marketplace and forgetting about it,” Perrotto said.

Country Home Products is not in the economically depressed Northeast Kingdom, and so qualified for the EB-5 program through the “troubled business” provision. The Great Recession of 2008 hit the company hard.

“We sell high-ticket, discretionary products,” Perrotto said. “In the four years leading up to 2008, we doubled our revenues, but it was very tough in 2008 and 2009. Like every other category of high-ticket products, you can live without a DR field brush mower, I’m sad to admit.”

Under the troubled business scenario, Perrotto doesn’t have to create jobs for his EB-5 investors to get their green cards, he just has to preserve the 130 jobs Country Home Products provides. The balance of the 240 jobs he needs to preserve to meet the green card requirements for his 24 investors will come from indirect jobs at DR Power Equipment’s suppliers and others. The $12 million he raised from Chinese investors was used to pay for product development and market expansion, according to Perrotto.

“It’s one of the most remarkable economic development opportunities that exists,” Perrotto said. “There’s nothing without critics, but it’s hard to find any flaws in this program. There’s no cost to taxpayers, other than the efforts of economic development officers. Millions of dollars are flowing in to benefits companies, with zero cost. I scratch my head when I hear the program questioned.”

Perrotto is quick to point out that there are costs, however, for the company seeking EB-5 investors. There’s travel, legal fees for offering documents, and consulting fees for economic modeling.

“I’m reluctant to share how much we spent, but a company should easily expect to spend a couple of hundred thousand dollars before even soliciting an investor,” Perrotto said.

There’s also a charge from the state, which vets and approves every EB-5 project through the Vermont Regional Center. In 2011, the state Legislature implemented a $1,500 fee for every EB-5 investor, paid by the developer. The fee was not retroactive, but began in 2011.

“It’s an expense mitigator rather than a revenue stream,” said Lawrence Miller, secretary of commerce.

The fee is well worth it, Perrotto said.

“As a Vermonter, I was so proud to hear the reaction from Chinese nationals about how reassured they were this was a Vermont Regional Center project,” Perrotto said. “They knew it was the most esteemed regional center in the country.”

DreamLife

This Canadian company is planning to build as many as 10 assisted living homes in Vermont, using about $160 million of EB-5 money from 320 investors toward a total cost for the project of $200 million-$240 million. That makes it, if it comes to fruition, second only to Stenger’s plans in terms of its ambition, with some 3,200 jobs at stake.

Spokesman Phil Mooney, an immigration consultant in Burlington, Ontario, said each assisted living home will require about 32 EB-5 investors, making up $16 million of the $20 million-$24 million required to build each home, depending on the cost of the land.

“There’s a real market for assisted living homes,” Mooney said. “Vermont is the oldest state in the country.”

Mooney said the consortium that makes up DreamLife, including builders as well as immigration specialists, has approvals for two sites in the state, and has most of the eight other sites selected. Some of the sites require Act 250 approval, and some don’t, Mooney said.

Mooney traveled to Vietnam for nine days to present seminars on DreamLife for potential investors there. Vietnam is where China was 10 years ago, Mooney said, in terms of explosive growth.

“They’re picking up the garment business from China because they have lower labor costs,” he said. “They’re modernizing very quickly. Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh — the people who own the factories have tons of money, especially in Vietnam.”

The homes will be built with advanced pre-fabrication techniques developed in Quebec, which will be transferred to Vermont manufacturers, Mooney said. The buildings should go up in three to five months, he said, compared to at least a year using conventional construction.

Quechee Lakes

Quechee Lakes is a high-end residential development covering 5,200 acres in Quechee that is marketing itself to second-home buyers. Ed Vydra, a principal in Taurus New England Investments, LLC, the privately held Boston real estate company that bought The Quechee Lakes Co. in 2005, said about 40 percent of the current homeowners are from the greater Boston area, about 20 to 25 percent are from the New York/Fairfield County, Conn. area, and the balance are from “all over the place.”

Taurus is reformulating a plan for the next phase of about 60 residential units it intends to build at Quechee Lakes. Vydra said he’ll sit soon with Brent Raymond, director of the EB-5 Vermont Regional Center, to discuss the plan, which will call for raising $15 million-$20 million of foreign investment through EB-5.

That means 30 to 40 investors and 300 to 400 direct and indirect jobs, which Vydra said would come in the construction industry, and in the occupations supporting the Quechee Club, the homeowners association at Quechee Lakes. The club includes two 18-hole golf courses, 12 tennis courts, 35 miles of trails and a polo field.

“When you think about it, if we’re adding incremental end users or members, then the Quechee Club itself will need to hire more people on a permanent and seasonal basis,” Vydra said.

Taurus has about $2 billion in assets under management worldwide, including all types of real estate — industrial, office, warehouse, residential, second homes and raw land — in the United States and Canada, as well as Germany, India, the United Kingdom, Turkey and South America.

Seldon Technologies

Seldon Technologies, based in Windsor, makes water purification systems for the military and residential use. Although the company appears on the list of approved EB-5 projects provided by the Vermont Regional Center, President Roger Williams did not respond to numerous attempts to contact him regarding the company’s plans for the program.

Brent Raymond, director of the Vermont Regional Center, said in an interview with the Burlington Free Press that Seldon was approved for $20 million in EB-5 financing for a combination of research and development and expansion. But he said the company “had some changes” and is looking at pulling back somewhat from their plans to raise $20 million.

“They haven’t given us final word,” Raymond said. “We don’t usually give out project specific information. We defer that to the projects themselves, just because it can be proprietary information.”

Sugarbush Resort

Sugarbush owner Win Smith raised $20 million in EB-5 financing for expansion at the resort he bought in 2002. Like Country Home Products, Sugarbush qualified for “troubled business” status under the EB-5 program, tasked with preserving, rather than creating, 10 direct or indirect jobs per investor.

“I inherited a business in distress,” Smith said. “I had to save jobs. We weren’t making money, we were losing money. I put personal capital into it to keep it afloat.”

Smith said Sugarbush had suffered a significant decline in skier visits over a number of years when he bought it, and also had a tremendous backlog of deferred maintenance and high employee turnover. Since 2002, Smith has invested $90 million in the resort, including his own equity, bank financing, and EB-5 money.

Before buying Sugarbush, Smith spent 28 years at Merrill Lynch, the last 10 years as chairman of Merrill Lynch International. Unlike the principals at most other EB-5 projects in the state, Smith did not go out and get EB-5 investors in person. Instead, he was approached by an attorney in Washington, D.C., named David Morris, whose firm, VisaLaw, was aware of his plan for development at the resort. Morris suggested EB-5 as a good way to help finance those plans, and when Smith agreed, found the 40 foreign investors Smith needed.

“Even though I met many of the EB-5 investors — we invite them to come and visit and enjoy the resort — I was dealing with one institution, one voice, instead of 40,” Smith said. “As a result, I spent very little personal time doing that. I needed to focus on turning the business around.”

Smith did pay the law firm “good money” for their services, he says, which included fees not only to find the investors, but also to manage the processing and paperwork required by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

On a rather warm afternoon in March — when the skiing was still good — Smith gave a tour of Sugarbush, pointing out the construction of the Rice Brook condominiums, slope side, which will largely pay back Sugarbush’s EB-5 investors, should things go well. As Smith pointed out, there are no guarantees — another requirement by USCIS.

Rice Brook is launching with the first phase of 15 condos, which Smith said go for up to $1 million each and are selling well to buyers from the New York and Boston metropolitan areas. Fully built, Rice Brook will contain 80 to 90 units, but Smith will add condos only when the demand is there for them.

Smith is unequivocal about what EB-5 has meant for Sugarbush.

“Sugarbush would not have made it without the EB-5 program,” he says.

WhistlePig

WhistlePig is a small whiskey company based on a 500-acre farm in Shoreham that also grows grain, and has cattle, sheep, goats, horses, and pigs. Although the company is on the approved list of EB-5 projects, Sivan Cotel, chief operating officer and chief financial officer, said WhistlePig has not yet “pursued anything related to EB-5.”

Cotel did hint, however, at what might be in the works.

“We bottle our whiskey by hand a couple of days a week,” he said. “It’s a small operation, but we have various permits and applications in for what we hope will be future growth, including building our own distillery at the farm.”